Sorry for not getting back to this earlier.
After brainhz left I told the clannies to try to stop the noob and pwn talk etc.
They stopped for 5 mins.
Please don't discriminate against all clans.
Some are nice guy(my CSS clan) but there are a lot of dicks out there.

I've been experimenting with a number of sprays, as I have been since the Beta. A small showcase of my current set:

My only spray where I didn't create the VMT myself, a tribute to the best part of The Orange Box.

My most common spray, I thought it was from Read Or Die, but it turns out not to be (it just used the same painted lady technique for the credits), perhaps from the R.O.D. television series or something else entirely.

Just converted this a couple days ago, a tribute to the pyro and the near mythical days when The Simpsons was actually entertaining (the actual spray looks better than this crappy gif):

My new holiday spray, from the Mount & Blade website (basically, I thought it was cute):

By the way, it is often stated that the skill level on Stan's Lounge is quite a bit higher than you normally encounter. I was wondering about this a bit, and while hard to prove comprehensively, I did examine one small thing. I looked at HLstatsX global ranking of Team Fortress 2 players, which tracks the rankings of players on all HLstatsX monitored servers. I took the ten highest ranked players of Stans, and checked their global ranking, which tracks more than 275,000 players. To put that another way, anyone with a rank over 5,500 is in the top two percentile of all HLstatsX players, anyone with a rank over 2,750 is in the top one percentile.

I use alpha channel transparency with .png images, then convert the images with VTFEdit. Have to pay attention to a few details when converting, such as choosing a format that accepts the transparency information, but other than setting up the alpha channel for the original image, it is a pretty simple process.

Good times on the new maps tonight. Definitely suggest folks download them in advance. Snofort is good seasonal fun. I think Smooth may be a keeper. Good CTF action. Folks may want to scout out the route to the 2nd level of the battlements in advance, the intel doesn't go back to the intelligence room after you capture it.

By the way, it is often stated that the skill level on Stan's Lounge is quite a bit higher than you normally encounter. I was wondering about this a bit, and while hard to prove comprehensively, I did examine one small thing. I looked at HLstatsX global ranking of Team Fortress 2 players, which tracks the rankings of players on all HLstatsX monitored servers. I took the ten highest ranked players of Stans, and checked their global ranking, which tracks more than 275,000 players. To put that another way, anyone with a rank over 5,500 is in the top two percentile of all HLstatsX players, anyone with a rank over 2,750 is in the top one percentile.

You also have to remember we beat the hell out of each other. It is hard to have a really good ranking if you are constantly getting your ass kicked by your opponents, and if you play on the Lounge long enough, you will get your ass handed to you on a platter. Most of the time with a smile.

Okay, as an experiment, I created a short video walkthrough of one of the new maps, Smooth B2. As Oso mentioned, the Capture Point is differently placed than you find in most other capture the flag maps, so I wanted to show it off. Hopefully this will help familiarize you with the map, if you are interested in spending three and a half minutes on watching it.

If you all want, I can likely produce videos for the other three new maps as well, though it does take enough work that I don't want to waste time on it unless there is some demand.

In other news, it looks like the server rotation has sorted itself out, after all those maps of Dustbowl and Gravel Pit.

Thanks for the walkthrough Tannhauser (sorry I haven't been on much folks, new baby now 10 days old has been occupying most of my hours of late), I grabbed a copy of the maps and did some experiments; definate fun for demos and soldiers, as you can sticky/rocket jump to/from any of the central platforms with a bit of practise

Thanks for the walkthrough Tannhauser (sorry I haven't been on much folks, new baby now 10 days old has been occupying most of my hours of late), I grabbed a copy of the maps and did some experiments; definate fun for demos and soldiers, as you can sticky/rocket jump to/from any of the central platforms with a bit of practise

I'm working on a Capture/Defend style map right now. Its still in the planning phases as I have been lazy but I'm taking my computer with my when I drive home to Cali for Christmas, So hopefully I can get some rooms built.

Its going to be a Missle silo complex that gets attacked. So far I got planned out the Silo room, comand and control, and the power room. Seems to be the magic number is 3 "rounds" each getting easier to defend. I started with the final round first and I am working my way back to the start. Once I get it on paper I will fire up forge and see if I can remember how to work it.

[size=4]http://www.mazianni.com
Tempest says: "A team hat doe snot communicate and talk to each other about what the next move will be is going to lose."
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I'm working on a Capture/Defend style map right now. Its still in the planning phases as I have been lazy but I'm taking my computer with my when I drive home to Cali for Christmas, So hopefully I can get some rooms built.

Its going to be a Missle silo complex that gets attacked. So far I got planned out the Silo room, comand and control, and the power room. Seems to be the magic number is 3 "rounds" each getting easier to defend. I started with the final round first and I am working my way back to the start. Once I get it on paper I will fire up forge and see if I can remember how to work it.

Sounds cool. Is it possible to modify the objectives of the map from the standard capture/defence of control points? The scenario you present seems ripe for some variation where the defending team is trying to launch the missle, and the attacking team wants to prevent that. So there would be an arbitrary count down as the missle gets ready to launch, and then the defending team needs to maintain control of some key points in order for the missle to launch.

ranalin, if you have a problem with an image loading than let me or the person who posted it know. Making a bunch of posts at once to push the page count makes the thread difficult to read.

huh?

My guess would be that ranalin had some sort of trouble loading the page with my .gif sprays, and posted a string of times to move the thread onto the next page. Certis, as I suppose from his post here, deleted those posts, then deleted the animated images in one of my previous posts(with not so much as a link left? Just change the image tags into URL ones, trouble solved at minimal effort, leaving the basic content still there, resulting in less arbitrary and more courteous post editing).

Erm... did people find the walkthrough any help? Impact could really use one as well, so I was thinking about doing one for that map, but with only two responses of any sort, I'm not sure how helpful my Smooth B2 one was.